Summary of Inquiries in LIBE 477

The following is a summary of my learnings from my inquiry blogs in LIBE 477. I have included my key take aways and new directions for development that have grown out of these blogs. The four inquiries include:

• How to be a Champion of Reading Culture in Your School
• Finding My Digital Mentors
• Mentoring: Relationships Come First!
• Mobile Libraries in Kabul

Key Take Aways

• Building a reading culture is not something an individual does, but rather it is a team effort. When school communities work together collaboratively (students, parents, and staff) to create a reading culture – members of the community will develop the pleasurable habit of reading in everyday life and become lifelong learners (Alex-Nmecha & Horsfall, 2019).
• In order to become a digital mentor, we must create a Personal Learning Network (PLN) of our own digital mentors in our schools, our district, and globally. If we want to be digital leaders in our schools, we must first be able to show our students what it looks like to have a positive digital identity ourselves (Miller, 2022). We must be willing to show ourselves as digital learners with digital mentors. 
• Relationships and learning community are the key ingredients in creating the trust and dependability that people are looking for in an educational mentor. Finding effective and simple ways to deliver support for teachers in regards to resources and curriculum is a key role for a TL.
• Mobile libraries in developing countries are able to bridge some of the accessibility gaps in regards to getting resources to children in rural and remote areas. Companies such as Idea Boxes are ensuring that these mobile library options can also provide digital access to these children. Charmaghz is an organization that provides 16 mobile libraries to areas in and around Kabul. Finding ways to begin to provide digital access in these areas is a must in addressing issues of accessibility and equity.

New Avenues for Development

In my inquiry about becoming a champion of reading cultures, I explored many learning commons and PLN’s to discover a plethora of ideas of how to promote a reading culture. These ideas are summarized in my graphic, Building Reading Culture: Next Steps. The one area that I would like to try this year is the area of Reading Competitions. I would like to host either a March Madness Competition or the Forest of Reading Competition (Blue Spruce Award). Picking one of these two will be my first challenge! Then I will have to carve out a timeline that is suitable for the competition is the next.

In regards to finding digital mentors, I want to pursue my development of a global PLN. My global PLN currently is extremely small, but useful. I primarily follow in the Facebook group, Learning Librarians. This groups has given me numerous ideas to implement. I would like to move forward in developing my PLN by building a trusted network around a professional Instagram account for my Future Vision Project in this class. In doing this, my goal is to begin to share my ideas with others as well as learn from them.

In regards to becoming a mentor to others, I think it’s time I take a step past my priorities which are relationship and learning communities and focus on providing ProD opportunities. This is the third year in my role as TL and I can be proud of the relationships and learning community that I have promoted in my learning commons. It is time to focus on how I can use my skill sets help others. The two goals I have made for myself in this area are:

1. Create more and update Destiny Collections for common topics of interest in my school (This week I am working on my Remembrance Day Collection and my Diwali Collection). I have had a positive response from teachers who use my Destiny Collections to determine what they want to use in the classroom. Especially a couple of my classroom teachers that find it physically difficult to get to the library every time they need a resource for a variety of reasons. These teachers look at my Destiny Collections in their classrooms and email me so I can deliver the resource.
2. Create a menu of services I can provide and share it with others. This would be a 1-page PDF that helps teachers know what I can offer. I often hesitate to do this because I think it might limit what I can do. I love to get creative and try new things, but I think the menu will be particularly important for newer teachers to the career and my school to begin the journey of building a relationship with me.

A Topic for Further Inquiry

Learning about the Mobile Libraries in Kabul was eye opening to me. Although I knew about mobile libraries, learning about a specific one opened up my mind and eyes to some of the equity challenges faced for children in the developing world. But beyond that, this inquiry inspired me to learn about the necessity of mobile libraries in the developed world as well. Ferreira’s (2022) paper about mobile libraries all around the world states that mobile libraries can have a major impact on learning gaps and the digital divide. She says that mobile libraries are a way that libraries can reach communities that otherwise do not have access to resources and technology (Ferreira, 2022). In North America we have many rural and impoverished areas that need access to libraries and technology. Mobile libraries such as buses or The Idea Boxes can play a huge part in bridging learning gaps in Canada. This made me wonder if these types of services are already used in our remote Indigenous communities in Canada.

I want to take this inquiry further in a number of ways:

• Become a supporter of mobile libraries around the world, such as Charmaghz, both financially and through educating others about these efforts and the value of mobile libraries.
• Continue my research further by learning what services are provided to our remote Indigenous communities in Canada – and how we can better address these digital access and literacy gaps in our own country.
• Begin a journey of inquiries that are inspired by picture books in my library. I believe that this inquiry gave me a far deeper understanding of The Library Bus by Bahram Rahman that will make my read aloud of it with my students that much more powerful. I would like to do this for other picture books in my library and keep track of my inquiries on my blog and Instagram account for others to use.
• Use picture books such as this to inspire grade 4-5 inquiries into issues connected to the curriculum. At the BCTLA Conference a couple weeks ago, Devon McLeay (2023) showed how her grade 6 students used picture books about human rights to inspire inquiry projects about the topic.

Last Thoughts

I have enjoyed the freedom to learn about these topics, reading culture, personal professional development, digital mentoring, and developing libraries in an authentic way that allows me to ask questions and look for answers. I have enjoyed learning from others in my cohort. The dialogue has enhance my learnings in this course and I look forward to implementing many of the strategies that I have learned about and appreciate the new perspectives my inquiries have given me.

Works Cited

Alex-Nmecha, J. C. & Horsfall, M. N. (2019). Reading culture, benefits, and the roles of libraries in the 21st century. Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal). 2836. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/2836

Charmaghz. An Opportunity for Critical Thinking. Retrieved from https://charmaghz.org/

Ferreira, L. (2022). Mobile libraries: the past, the present, the future. Western University. Retrieved from https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=fims_evolvingtech_finalproj_winter2022

McLeay, D. (Oct. 20, 2023). Teaching Social Justice with Picture Books. At the BCTLA Conference, Surrey BC.

Miller, S. M. (2022, October 4). Digital Leadership (with Jennifer Casa-Todd). In Leading From the Library, season 2, episode 6. Future Ready Schools. https://leading-through-the-library.simplecast.com/episodes/digital-leadership-GVavnp3thttps://leading-through-the-library.simplecast.com/episodes/digital-leadership-GVavnp3t

Rahman, B. (2020). The Library Bus. Pajama Press Inc. Toronto, Ontario.